Dr Asal Bidarmaghz

Senior Lecturer in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Asal Bidarmaghz is a Senior Lecturer in Geotechnical Engineering at UNSW Sydney.
She founded and leads the Energy Geotechnics Research Group and Laboratory, UNSW's first dedicated energy geotechnics laboratory and one of the first in Australia.
Her research asks how the ground and buried infrastructure can become part of the energy and climate solution without compromising geotechnical safety. She studies how tunnels, piles, retaining walls and pavements exchange heat with the surrounding ground, how soil responds to repeated heating and cooling, and how heat accumulating beneath cities affects the structures already there. Her group combines laboratory experiments, thermo-hydro-mechanical theory and modelling, and field implementation.
Research Programme
•    Experimental energy geotechnics. Purpose-built rigs designed and commissioned at UNSW: a cylindrical thermal cell that measures soil thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity from a single transient test, and a large thermal box for studying heat rejection into soil and the resulting thermo-mechanical deformation around geothermal structures.
•    Thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of energy geostructures. Critical-state-based frameworks for energy tunnels that capture temperature-induced settlement, pore-pressure change and lining stress under cyclic thermal loading, and coupled heat, water and vapour transport models for energy piles in unsaturated ground.
•    Geothermal pavements. Modelling and model-scale experiments on how heat exchange within pavements affects thermally induced creep, pavement life and surface temperatures, with a focus on reducing urban heat rather than on thermal yield alone.
•    Underground climate change. City-scale modelling of ground temperature and groundwater beneath dense cities, now extended with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology to assess ground deformation under subsurface urban heat islands and the use of borehole heat exchangers to control heat build-up.
•    Field implementation. A directional shallow geothermal system installed at Peats Ridge, NSW, supplying about 30 kW of thermal energy to a greenhouse, with an accompanying web-based design tool.

Current and Recent Funding
•    ARC Discovery Project DP260102508 (2026–2028, $750,000), A Mechanistic Approach to Assess Integrity of Soil–Geothermal Structures. Chief Investigator; initiated the project and leads its delivery.
•    Australia's Economic Accelerator Seed AE230100068 (2024–2025, $215,000), Transforming Urban Energy Supply with Innovative and Cost-Effective Shallow Geothermal Systems. Project lead.
•    Australia–Germany Joint Research Cooperation Scheme (2025–2026), Archetypes for Resilient Underground Structures under Thermal Changes (ArcRUS), with KIT. Lead Chief Investigator.
Research Group and Supervision
Asal leads the Energy Geotechnics Research Group, with three PhD completions and three current PhD candidates, all under her primary supervision. The group has capacity for 1–2 more PhD students in energy geotechnics and underground climate change. Prospective students are welcome to email a CV.
Teaching
•    CVEN4202 Advanced Topics in Geotechnical Engineering, which introduces shallow geothermal systems, thermo-hydro-mechanical analysis and advanced soil modelling.
•    CVEN4204 Ground Improvement Techniques.
•    Lead of a 2025 Teaching Initiative Grant establishing a hands-on geothermal student project.

Service Roles and Professional Organisations/Affiliations
•    Chair, UNSW Engineering Faculty Staff Gender Equity and Diversity Working Group
•    International Scientific Committee, ICSMGE 2026 (sole Australia/New Zealand nominee)
•    ISSMGE TC308 (Energy Geotechnics), nominated member
•    Australian Geomechanics Society: Sydney Technical Committee Engagement Coordinator; NSW representative, Women in AGS
•    Associate, UNSW Australian Human Rights Institute

Editorial Boards
•    Editorial Board, Environmental Geotechnics
•    Guest Editor, Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology
•    Special Issue Editor, Discover Applied Sciences

Awards
•    The Outstanding Paper Award, Elsevier's Journal of Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment (2022)
•    The Most Cited Paper Award, Elsevier's Journal of Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment (2019)
•    The Best Research and Practice Paper Award, the ICE Environmental Geotechnics Journal (2016)
•    The Best Paper Award, International Australia New Zealand Conference on Geomechanics (ANZ) (2012)

Education and Employment
•    Senior Lecturer, UNSW, Australia (2022)
•    Lecturer, UNSW, Australia (2019)
•    Research Associate, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom (2017)
•    Research Fellow, University of Melbourne, Australia (2015)
•    PhD, University of Melbourne, Australia (2015)
•    MSc, University of Tehran, Iran (2008)
•    BSc, University of Tehran, Iran (2005)